Need feedback on 3D / 2D Game Art

Alysis

I am a 3D artist who graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in March of this year. I am currently employed as a digital printer working 40 hours/week and making $12/hr... which is okay, but I really want to push for a job in my field. I'm going to be completely revamping my portfolio, but I need some advice on where I should take it. What do I need to improve upon, what works, what doesn't, etc.

Here's a link to my online portfolio: http://www.gameartbymishakrul.com

Iruka

Please post some work in the thread, unless its something that cant be posted, like music, its against the rules to have no art in the actual thread.

From a quick glance, your site, the bee creature really stands out to me as your best work, And Cain really seems to be the weakest. Your animation is pretty good too, so you seem like an okay generalist. What kind of job, particularly, are you aiming for?

Alysis

Iruka wrote:

Please post some work in the thread, unless its something that cant be posted, like music, its against the rules to have no art in the actual thread.

From a quick glance, your site, the bee creature really stands out to me as your best work, And Cain really seems to be the weakest. Your animation is pretty good too, so you seem like an okay generalist. What kind of job, particularly, are you aiming for?

Thanks for looking over my work, Iruka. Cain was rushed and therefore was intended to be a fairly simple character, but I uploaded him anyway because he's my best example of a skinning / rigging job. He deforms almost flawlessly. I'm looking to create more models like the wasp.

I'm fine being a generalist since I enjoy almost every aspect of 3D modeling (not a huge fan of environment / vehicle modeling, but I can do it). But a Character Artist position is what I'd really like to aim for.

CaffeinatedGuy

Alysis wrote:

I am a 3D artist who graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh in March of this year. I am currently employed as a digital printer working 40 hours/week and making $12/hr... which is okay, but I really want to push for a job in my field. I'm going to be completely revamping my portfolio, but I need some advice on where I should take it. What do I need to improve upon, what works, what doesn't, etc.

At first glance the crafting table would look really cool except for the texturing on the table itself maybe needs a redo it just makes it look too tily. What are you using to light your models? If you had a better global illumination model I bet it would look a lot sharper on Mertuk the lighting looks too flat to me. Keep working at it your poly counts look good.

Kochikens

Can you post with wireframes??

Your presentation is really weak and your textures and shaders are incredibly weak. If you're looking to specialize in characters, you need to work on your bump maps and your spec maps and have those on your site as well.

Alysis

Kochikens wrote:

Can you post with wireframes??

Your presentation is really weak and your textures and shaders are incredibly weak. If you're looking to specialize in characters, you need to work on your bump maps and your spec maps and have those on your site as well.

Do you have any suggestions for how I can present my work in a way that is more appealing to potential employers?

Alysis

I'd like to say a big "Thank you" to everyone who replied to my OP. Based on the feedback I have received, I've come to the following conclusions about my portfolio:

- I have a weak overall presentation.
- I have "Incredibly weak" texture work
- The way the textures are displayed is "disorienting"
- My portfolio pieces require better global illumination
- If possible, my portfolio should be themed
- Work from other peoples' concepts, not my own
- I should maintain a more "focused" portfolio and display either characters OR props
- I need to use references and watch more tutorial videos

Thanks again to everyone who has helped me out

beavotron

Hey! Welcome to the forums

Like kochi said, post some wireframes and the 3D folks can give you a hand. @cristoval in particular is friggen amazing with this sort of thing, I'm sure he'd have some really good advice for you and could send you in the right direction. You have a good start I think, you just need to either find your niche (modeling probably) and really showcase that (maybe remove textures for now until you become a bit better at it) or polish up your textures and supporting stuff

People looking for modelers are looking for good models, if there are good textures on there, it's bonus. If the textures are poor, it's a distraction

Again, I've paged cristo, but if he doesn't respond, maybe message him directly, guy is a 3D genius and he works in the industry.

Scosglen

I can't speak to issues with the 3D work as that's outside my area of expertise, but as far as the portfolio in general goes:

I would cut out the entire 2D section, aside from maybe the model sheets. Some of it is just totally irrelevant for a professional portfolio (the figure work), but all of it is somewhat underwhelming in terms of technical skill.

You are often judged by the worst piece in a portfolio, so keep that in mind when you feel compelled to include weaker work just to show how broad your skillset is. This also applies to your 3D stuff, re: "Cain was rushed and therefore was intended to be a fairly simple character, but I uploaded him anyway because he's my best example of a skinning / rigging job."

Kochikens

Generally game modelers are expected to do their own textures. I mean, often you'll have someone looking over them for you and overseeing the quality, but if you're going for Character art, yeah. That is all on you. Nobody is doing your textures for you. Gotta make that shit hot.

Normal maps, diffuse maps, spec maps, alpha maps. Make a character model that has all of them.

Do just a head, even. Do a super hi-res head which is prettymuch impractical for anything but film, do a NIS (Non interactive sequence) mid-res version, and then have a low in-game model version of it. Learn zbrush.

Look at some portfolios of people who work at game companies in the role you'd like, emulate the layout, the structure, the content of their portfolios.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=121&t=981866

I mean, look at some of this work. It doesn't matter that it's really impractical for games, because christ, if you can do the best work, yes, you can do low res work. Push yourself. And remember that even if your goal is games, chances are you're going to end up sometime in your life wriggling between film, tv and games.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=121&t=961315

These are assets for Uncharted 2. Look at them. Gaze upon their beauty. Look at this dudes portfolio

http://www.hannohagedorn.com/


edit: Also I didn't see the texture work in your portfolio because you didn't post it here. Honestly, yeah, those are pretty weak. It doesn't help that your rendering and presentation is poor, you could really make your alright work look a lot better than it is by showing it off a lot better. That tables texture is just really not good. That is not what a table looks like. Go for realism and then you can scale back once you've mastered that and do stylish.

Alysis

I'm posting from work so I can't render out any full-body wireframe shots at the moment, but here's what I've pulled from my website.

Alysis

Alright, I've gone ahead and worked on a newer model... something a bit more elaborate, and not of my own design. I tried taking everyone's advice to heart and really focusing on my texture quality. Development of this critter has been a joint-project between myself and friend of mine who specializes in concept art. I'll upload a pic of the textures as well so they can be critiqued on their own.

This creature was modeled in Maya. Textures were generated using Zbrush and Photoshop. He's 2914 Tris, and not rigged yet.

bowen

Holy shit it's Eeyore.

Most of that looks pretty good, your strength is in non-human characters. That wasp is amazing looking to be honest. And your lizard man looks more believable, though cartoony, than your real mans. I'm not too artistic myself but I enjoy lurking here and gotta say you've got some skill, but still some room for improvement.

Kochikens

This is loads better. Your texturing still isn't the best, but it's obvious you're really improving.

Work on your spec, though.




And once again, presentation. Just because you have a lo-res model (With a few pretty big texture maps) doesn't mean you need to do hard ass shadows.

Alysis

Kochikens ~ One of my biggest stumbling blocks is figuring out how to get the most out of my specular maps. You can't see it real well in the example I posted but I added a rhino skin texture to the spec map so that you could see little cracks in his skin when the light hits the model a certain way. I'm trying to think creatively as I can but I've always felt that my spec maps are lacking.

stinkyfingers

Awsome! another 3d artist! I as well am Trying to learn to become a 3d/video game artist. Although I am relativly new to 3d, and by the look of it, I dont know what Im doing yet, but I do have some critiques...

A charachter artists spot is a difficult one to snag, sense companies need less of them and people are more likely to specialize in them than compared to environment artists, so specializing in environment would most likey be your best bet. Second use references, I dont know if your going for a cartoony style or not but (like the rinocerus reference) a lot more sculpting/detail can be acheived in your models that could realy show off normal and color maps.

I suggest ditching animation and focusing on the modeling/texturing aspect using animation only as a way of proving that your mesh is animatable. become a badass at what you do, its seemingly manadatory in the games industry or the art industry in general.


check this site out that i frequent. There are industry professionals there more than willing to help you out.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/

Alysis

Stickyfingers - Thanks for the feedback. I didn't go as heavily detailed with "Althok" because the style of the concept art wasn't very realistic. I was aiming for something between cartoony and realism, so I decided not to put a whole lot of detail into the normal maps.

Although, one of the places I struggle at is doing cartoony characters, but still adding enough detail so that they look refined.

I agree, I think animation is going to go on the backburner for now and become kind of a secondary skill. Modeling is what I really love and I want that to be evident in my portfolio. I've also considered marketing myself as just a "3D Artist" precisely because it's difficult to find a position specifically as a character artist. A more generalized title is going to increase my chances of landing a job.

Alysis

Here's an alien staff that I just finished. I tried experimenting some more with custom shaders for this model. I wanted to mimic the look of real amber, as well as the glittery texture you would see on the shell of a scarab. Overall I'm fairly proud of this, but feedback is always welcome.